11/II.

Dear friend! I received two of your letters, from the 4th and 5th of II. Many thanks. Regarding the shipment of *Social-Democrat*, we gave your letter to the secretary of the expedition commission to read. Tomorrow I will remind him personally, and I hope they will do everything.

The Plekhanovist brochure was promised to be sent to you by the Parisians, and we are very surprised that you did not receive it. We will order it again and obtain it ourselves so as to send it to you directly 84.

Two Plekhanovists were here, whom you wrote about 85. I had a talk with them. Pay attention to the fair-haired one (they are traveling back by the same route) — he has apparently been repudiated by Plekhanov even more than the dark-haired one. The latter seems to be a hopeless chatterbox. But the first one keeps silent, and you cannot discern what is on his mind.

From *Our Word* (appearing in Paris in place of *Voice*) we received a letter today with a plan for a general protest against "official social-patriotism" (concerning the project of a London conference of socialists de la Triple Entente**). Whether this conference will take place, we do not know; we recently received a letter from Guesde forwarded by Litvinov, in which he is organizing something strange — summoning the Executive Committee of the International Socialist Bureau in The Hague for 20. II, and organizing there personal negotiations (!!) with delegates from England, France and Russia!!

How curious!! It looks like some sort of preparations for something francophile and patriotic (by the way, you are quite right that now there are many "philes," but few socialists. For us both francophiles and germanophiles are equally = patriots, bourgeois or their lackeys, and not socialists. The Bundists, for instance, are mostly germanophiles and are glad of Russia's defeat. But how are they better than Plekhanov? Both are opportunists, social-chauvinists, only of different colors. And Axelrod too).

We answered *Our Word* that we welcomed its proposal and sent our own draft declaration*. We have little hope of agreement with them, because Axelrod, it is said, is in Paris, and Axelrod (see nos. 86 and 87 of *Voice* and no. 37 of *Social-Democrat*) is a social-chauvinist desiring to reconcile francophiles and germanophiles on the basis of social-chauvinism. We shall see what is dearer to *Our Word* — anti-chauvinism or the favor of Axelrod.

I think that both in Russia and throughout the world a new fundamental regrouping is taking shape within Social-Democracy: chauvinists ("social-patriots") and their friends, their defenders, — and anti-chauvinists. Fundamentally, this division corresponds to the division into opportunists and revolutionary Social-Democrats, but it is plus précis*** and represents, so to speak, the higher, more closely related to the socialist revolution, stage of development. And for us the old regrouping (liquidators and Pravdists) is becoming obsolete, being replaced by a new one, more rational: social-patriots and anti-patriots. By the way. They say: Dan = German "social-patriot," i.e., germanophile, i.e., for Kautsky. Is this true? It seems very likely to be true. It is curious that in the Central Committee there is a split along the line of the bourgeois: francophiles (Plekhanov + Aleksinsky + Maslov + *Our Dawn*) and germanophiles (Bund + Axelrod + Dan?? etc.).

If you cannot get money from the Swedes, write: we will send 100 frs****. Think over carefully where it would be better